Wi-Fi has come a long way since the early days of the first 802.11 Wi-Fi standard.

However, one thing has not changed, Cisco has been the industry leader through each phase of the Wi-Fi standard, and 802.11ac was no different. It seems like yesterday when we launched our first Aironet 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Point; the Aironet 1850. I remember being at Cisco Live San Diego in June 2015 when the 1850 AP made its debut.

Like a proud papa, I’m happy to report that Cisco has sold more than 2.5 million Aironet 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points!

The entire wireless landscape has changed since the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ratified the first Wi-Fi standard in 1997. Back then, networks offered limited bandwidth support and was barely enough for basic connectivity and seldom reliable. Wi-Fi was never used as a primary way to access the network as it is today. To be honest, it was more of an experiment that you tried once in a while to show off to your colleagues. Since that time, Cisco had added to the Aironet family making it one of the broadest portfolios in the industry. Ranging from the small to medium-sized business needs of the Cisco Aironet 1815 access points to the high-end Aironet 2800 and 3800 designed for mission critical and large enterprise deployments. The Aironet family also covers the 1830 and 1850 series, which is also designed for small to medium sized deployments and the 1540 and 1560 Access Points for outdoor coverage.

As we reflected on this, we realized that Aironet portfolio has crossed a very important milestone.

To put that in perspective:

If we gave every man woman and child living in fourth-largest populated city* in the United States, Houston, TX, one Cisco Aironet .11ac Wave 2 access point each, not only would everyone benefit from Cisco’s Wi-Fi innovation but there would be an extra 200,000 APs left over. (*According to the 2016 census).

If you lined up 2.5 million Aironet access points end to end (using Aironet 3800’s in this example), it would stretch from home plate in Fenway Park, Boston, MA to home plate in Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD.

No longer a neat parlor trick to entertain your engineering friends, today’s network needs to make decisions faster, combat more security threats and manage an unprecedented scale of connected devices. With 2.5 million Aironet Wave 2 access points sold, Cisco’s Aironet portfolio is part of Cisco’s Intent based network, which grows more intuitive every day. How does it do this? Because it’s informed by context and powered by design.

The Cisco Aironet portfolio as part of Cisco Wireless allows companies to face a seemingly unmanageable deluge of wireless devices that appears to grow larger every day. From IoT to a growing inventory of applications, the Cisco wireless network provides an always-on, always-available solution for the user.

How can we make that claim?

Through exclusive features such as the SD-Access Fabric; which provides one consistent policy across the entirety of your network—no matter if it’s wired and wireless. Similarly, Cisco and Apple partnership enable the network to optimize the Apple user experience through features like FastLane and rich client insights. Cisco offers the most complete Wireless portfolio. It addresses the needs of the large Enterprise deployments down to the small and medium-sized networks.

With Cisco Wireless, you get a secure, robust network that is faster, flexible, easier to deploy and manage that will grow as your business blossoms.

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